


Permanence in Motion

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cotton Candy Fluff, Drawing, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil has never seen Clint draw on paper, but he knows Clint loves to draw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanence in Motion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arsenicarcher (Arsenic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



Phil has never seen Clint draw on paper, but he knows Clint loves to draw.

The first time he notices is in a mission briefing. Clint has a fine point black pen and he draws an intricate sketch of the Eiffel Tower as Phil briefs them on a mission to Paris. When the briefing is over, Clint has the tower, six or seven inches long, on his right forearm. The black lines are thin near the top, pointing to Clint’s elbow, and thicker at the bottom with the base spreading out near his wrist.

Afterward, when Phil asks if he’d been distracted during the briefing, Clint juts his chin and recites all the mission objectives, addresses he needs, any additions Phil has made to the original packet, equipment he needs, and all exit strategies.

He draws, but he doesn’t miss anything.

After the Paris mission, Phil finds Clint, hair wet from a shower, sitting next to Agent Clark’s bed in Medical, keeping Clark’s mind of his pain with bar fight stories, mission gaffe stories, and the occasional circus story, all while doodling with a purple felt-tip pen on his torn jeans that he always pulls on after a mission. Phil watches as Clint draws an exploding building on the left pocket, the purple ink seeping into the faded denim and becoming mostly black. Clint looks up at Phil and down again at his pants before he shrugs, looks back at Clark, and launches back into another story.

Clint doodles on napkins at the bar when Phil, Jasper, Maria, and Natasha begin to drag him out with them every few weeks. He draws portraits, sometimes caricatures just to piss Maria off, of each of them while they take turns buying rounds of umbrella drinks. He autographs them in a loopy scrawl and passes them out at the end of the night like prizes.

Phil has kept every single one of them over the years.

After a particularly rough mission to Alaska, where Clint almost died of hypothermia because he was too stubborn to leave his perch, Phil finds himself sitting at his antique oak kitchen table at midnight. He has a pencil and spare piece of printer paper, and he draws a portrait. He might be the only one who can recognize who it’s supposed to be, but the glint of the eyes is there and the tousled hair is helped by the grain of the wood table beneath the paper. He finishes the picture while he sips some tea and tucks the paper into the drawer of his nightstand. He looks at it again in the morning before he heads back into the office and Medical to check on Clint.

Two months later, Phil passes out from blood loss in an alley in Havana and wakes in medical to an odd feeling on his wrist. He peels his eyes open and Clint looks up at him, pausing and saluting him lazily with a yellow marker. He gives Phil a hollow smile and tells him to go back to sleep. Phil does, and when he wakes again he has tiny yellow stars, a small, blue and green circle, and a silver moon inked onto his wrist. It’s all done in washable marker, so it’s gone in a few days, but Phil catches himself rubbing his wrist absently for a week or two after as Clint hovers over his recovery.

When they go out to dinner for their first date, Clint doodles – really just doodles – all over the kids’ menu someone left behind. Phil doesn’t actually see what he’s drawing, and he doesn’t care. When they lay sated in Phi’s bed afterward, Clint draws lazy loops and patterns across Phil’s chest and Phil feels like treasured canvas.

Phil draws a smiley face with syrup on the pancakes he makes for Clint in the morning, and Clint laughs, filling Phi’s kitchen with rich sound, and Phil takes a mental picture, tucks it into the very small box in his mind marked ‘personal,” and knows it’s worth a thousand words and glances traded over the four years they’ve known each other, and a thousand strokes of a pen.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am, in essence, taking writing lessons from arsenicjade. She challenged me to write something without using 'thought' words. I kinda managed it. I appreciate her help a great deal. This was also motivated by the "impromptu fluff fest" challenge on tumblr.


End file.
